Six Games Where Death is a New Beginning

ideo games typically regard death as a "this never happened" sort of situation. "What's that? You say Master Chief took one too many plasma shots to the head and fell over like a charred sack of yams? Well, the last time we checked, he was back at your last checkpoint, alive and well." It's a conceit we've all come to know and love since the earliest days of gaming, and while this treatment of death doesn't exactly offend our sensibilities, seeing developers do a little something more with it always makes for a more memorable experience -- even if it takes some time to adapt to the atypical.

The Souls series retains a lot of old-school design sensibilities, so, on the surface, its approach to player death doesn't seem all that strange. Yes, dying plops you back at your last checkpoint and resets any progress you might have made, but these games don't simply shrug off your failures; instead, any death results in a complete loss of any souls you happen to be carrying at the time -- and this particular currency proves vital to leveling up your character, as well as upgrading and purchasing new equipment and items. There's a bright side, though: If you're willing to venture back to the undoubtedly dangerous place you died, the souls will be there, waiting for you -- but die before you reach them, and this precious commodity will disappear from the game world entirely. Anyone who's had their pockets stuffed with a six-figure treasury of souls knows how harrowing this series can be when you're desperately scrambling in search of a place to spend this resource safely.

By its fifth installment, Breath of Fire needed a way to reinvent itself, so Capcom's Production Studio 3 came up with a seemingly preposterous idea to help call attention to their b-list series: this newest game would be an RPG that forces you to play it over and over and over again. This concept sounds terrible on the surface, but Dragon Quarter's restart system tries to make each attempt at reaching the ending somewhat different, as new cutscenes appear with successive replays to shed a little more light on the plot. As you do your typical RPG business, a meter constantly ticks away (silently, thank god) in the background -- and using some of the protagonist's more powerful moves in battle can tear away chunks at a time. As you run and re-run through this short RPG, learning its secrets, and accumulating experience points to dump on your party members for one final run, one thing is clear: Dragon Quarter isn't an RPG for everyone, but at least it dares to be different.

Those who washed their hands of Dragon Quarter's restart system were no doubt thrilled to see the game fail at retail -- and then, a few years later, surprised to see this same system (in a slightly different form) attached to a game that would be one of the defining titles of this console generation. Yes, Dead Rising may feature a little more action than Breath of Fire, but its own polarizing save system takes some very strong cues from Capcom's equally polarizing PlayStation 2 RPG. Both Frank West and Chuck Green have only 72 hours to achieve their goals, which involves a fair amount of trial and error; without the powers of clairvoyance (or an FAQ), it's impossible to know just when and where everything will go down in their respective malls. Luckily, the player can restart their progress in either game (either by death or bad ending) and retain all of their experience points and skills, making each attempt a slightly smoother ride. As with Dragon Quarter, The Dead Rising series offers a fairly short campaign where it takes more than a few tries to get everything right.

Gamers beating the drum for a "mature" Zelda during the depressing Wind Waker backlash must have conveniently ignored Majora's Mask. From the second you step into its world of Termina, one thing is made clear: in three days, everything will die. And thanks to Link's Groundhog's Day dilemma, he's forced to live out the bittersweet days of an entire population's final moments until he sets things right. Because players are only given 72 hours to work with, each cycle involves successfully executing some tight planning; should you see if you can open the path to the next dungeon and finish off the boss before the third day, or would it be a better idea to scour the land in search of sidequests dependent on the schedules of NPCs? Whatever the case, the setting of Majora's Mask begs to be explored down to its last secret, and the falling of the moon just gives our hero Link another excuse to give it one more go.

The recent Karateka remake might have been a little disappointing, but it did feature a few particularly forward-thinking Jordan Mechner-style ideas. You can play as three different protagonists during the 30-minute journey to the final encounter, but the game doesn't present a character choice from the outset. Instead, you start with the True Love (a handsome hero), and when he bites the dust, his beaten body gets knocked off of cliffside, and past a monk climbing his way up to the main stage. And when this replacement loses his last scrap of health, he's swapped out for a burly brute that's built like an ox. The challenge in Karateka lies in getting the first character -- in other words, your first life -- to the captive princess in one piece, because she's not too excited about marrying either of the alternate suitors. With this little twist, Mechner breathed new life into the standard "three lives" idea, and made the happiness of his remake's endings dependent on the Princess' needs -- that's pretty progressive.

Tragically, Super T.I.M.E. Force has only been playable by convention goers and anyone who's pulled a B&E at Capybara Games' office, but its treatment of death has us all excited about the possibilities for this scrappy little Contra-style shooter. T.I.M.E. Force's levels aren't long, but you won't make it through on your first attempt -- or your dozenth, for that matter. Luckily, the game remembers the actions made before a player's death, and repeats those actions alongside whatever character you happen to select for your next run. And if that sounds confusing, just imagine an entire army of every life you've lost fighting by your side until this squadron of failure helps you squeak past the finish line. Oh, and if you manage to save one of these past lives by destroying whatever initially killed it, the game creates a checkpoint that lets you start again as that once-dead character. Honestly, this might make your head hurt if you think about it for too long, so you'll just have to trust us on this: it works very well.

Comments (13)

Omnikron: The Nomad Soul

When the character you start with dies you can move your soul into someone else in the city but causes you to lose all the stats and items from the previous character thus making you retrain the new one, I thought it was an amazing concept when I first played it.

Way of the Samurai

If we're gonna toss out other games that could have made this list, here's another. You keep replaying the same day or two, with the ability to see vastly different outcomes based on your choices. The only guy who sort of remembers what you did before is the town's swordsmith, who stores the blades you leave with him. Over time, you improve the strength and durability of those swords in an effort to make the ultimate weapon. This one doesn't really have an ending, per se, as you can keep replaying it. Still, a ton of fun, and worthy of more praise than it gets.

Planescape: Torment

Where is "Planescape: Torment"? One of the best rpg of all time, where you start the game waking up in a morgue and finds out that you've been dying for some time. Also, being killed sometimes triggers plot advances, level up and unlocks abilities.